She handed me a six-month-old and I looked at my sister’s face and not at the child’s, which is what people do, and I said something about the mall and she said something about needing three hours, and she said the eleven words, and she left.

Twenty minutes later Esme started screaming.

Part Two: Twenty Minutes

I am going to write this part once and briefly and then not come back to it, because it belongs to a person who is four now and who did not choose to be in an account of anything.

At about ten o’clock she began to cry and it did not stop and it was not a cry I had heard from her before.

I did the things.